California is not exactly a shining beacon of how the criminal justice system should operate. Believe it or not, the state can always come up with ways to make things worse.

The California legislature is pushing ahead with a bill that would allow cities to fine businesses up to $650 for the return of shopping carts that are stolen from those businesses. Current law permits only a $50 fine, which is considered a charge for the city locating and keeping custody of the cart. Adding $600 in possible fines and charges has been requested by San Jose, the new mayor of which has some good ideas for dealing with homelessness, but also has a budget crisis that these charges would likely go to addressing.

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Businesses will have three days after being notified to pick up their recovered shopping carts or face the massive new fine. For context on what these businesses are dealing with in cities with rampant homelessness, one Safeway in nearby San Francisco once had 160 shopping carts stolen in one month. San Jose sees some 2,000 shopping carts go missing every year.

Needless to say, fining businesses hundreds of dollars for being stolen from is not a particularly healthy way to view the criminal justice system. This can’t even be blamed solely on California Democrats, as all 10 Republicans in the state Senate voted to pass this bill alongside 29 Democrats. The bill has since been pushed along by the Local Government Committee in the state Assembly.

This has actually been standard procedure in California, though. In 2022, San Francisco resumed its policy of fining businesses for being graffiti-covered. Those businesses were forced to pay to have the graffiti covered up or pay the hundreds in fines the city would levy. In Oakland, Chinatown businesses were being hit with thousands of dollars in fines for being the victims of graffiti, as recently as even a few months ago.

This new shopping cart change serves the same function as those graffiti regulations. Let Democrat-run cities, poorly run with high taxes and even higher spending, bleed businesses for even more money for being the victims of crime that those cities refuse to prosecute (or the state of California and its “criminal justice reform” prevents them from being seriously prosecuted).

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The result, as always, is a worse experience for Californians. Just as when deodorants and shampoos were locked up in businesses while California permitted rampant shoplifting, businesses will not heavily restrict the use of their shopping carts. They may offer fewer carts or limit where they are used. Some may use those fancy carts with wheels that lock up when pushed too far, which often triggers when shoppers are trying to push the cart to their car in the parking lot. The change may even add to California’s rising cost of living, causing a little more inflation in California’s grocery prices.

California cities could simply throw the book at shopping cart thieves and stop wasting money so they have to rely on shopping cart retrieval fees, but that would be too difficult. Instead, California wants to punish the victims of crime further because that is the California way.